'Truth spoken without moderation reverses itself'
This blog is a source for intellectual exploration. It includes a list of alternative resources and a source of free books. The placement of an article does not imply that I agree with it, merely that I found it thought-provoking. There are also poems and book reviews. Texts written by me are labelled. Readers are free to re-post anything they like.

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Javed Anand - Good Sufi, Bad Muslim

So we know now, in
case we did not know it already: Bollywood celebrity and outgoing Rajya Sabha
Member of Parliament, Javed Akhtar, is a “Good Muslim”, and so are the Sufis
who invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to grace the World Sufi Forum in Delhi
on Thursday. Asaduddin Owaisi of the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen on the other
hand, as all of us always knew, is a “Bad Muslim”.

Actor and Modi-bhakt Anupam
Kher says it just like it is: “Bharat Mata ki jai!” is the “only real test” of
who is a desh premi and who is not. Self-proclaimed atheist
Akhtar and the Sufis have passed the test with flying colours. In his last
speech in the Rajya Sabha, Akhtar theatrically recited the magic mantra not
once but thrice. At the World Sufi Forum, Modi’s elaborate “Islam means peace” homily was greeted with
repeated chants of “Bharat Mata ki jai”. (Thankfully, no one offered a “Muslim
cap” to Modi, a man otherwise known to don every other type of headgear when it
suits him).

Owaisi, on the other hand, has declared in
a speech that while he has no issues with saying “Jai Hind”, he will not put
himself through Hindutva’s nationalism test even if someone held a knife to his
throat. Taking a cue from his party chief, on March 16 an MIM legislator, Waris
Pathan, refused to say “Bharat Mata ki jai” in the Maharashtra Assembly. The
refusal created a huge furore wherein along with the ruling Bharatiya Janata
Party-Shiv Sena coalition, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party joined
the chorus against Pathan. He was suspended from the Assembly for the entire
budget session.

No one, however,
seemed in the least concerned over Shiv Sena MLA Gulabrao Patil hurling the
following at Pathan: “Is desh mein rehna hai, kutto, to Vande Mataram bolna
hoga" If you want to stay in this country, dogs, you will have to
sing Vande Mataram. Having spoken in the plural, it is anybody’s guess whether
Patil was referring to the MIM in particular or Indian Muslims in general. As
an afterthought a day later, on the demand raised by the Congress party’s
leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, the Speaker
agreed to delete the Sena legislator’s obnoxious remark from the Assembly’s
record.

Everyone must be
patriotic, and patriotism will be defined by the bully, those who can shout the
loudest, have their way. You will be tested on not just the slogans you raise
but on those you do not raise. Patriotism will be forced by the BJP and its
parivar, but not just by them. If you are deemed to be not patriotic enough, be
very afraid, also, of the Congress.

— Indian Express,
lead editorial

Chanting the
refrain

The Sufis assembled at
the Delhi meet will no doubt maintain, as many other Muslims do, that “Bharat
Mata ki jai!” has nothing to do with religion; it’s about love for the nation.
They argue moreover that Muslims who oppose the slogan are falling into a trap
set by the Sangh Parivar. The Congress general secretary, Digvijay Singh, has expressed the same opinion. Such reasoning is
problematic as it skirts several critical questions.

From the Hyderabad
Central University, to Jawaharlal Nehru University, to everywhere else, the
Sanghis, who to their eternal shame had nothing to do with India’s freedom
struggle, have now delegated to themselves the sole supreme authority to judge
who is a patriot and who is not using a simple four-word test.

Why is “Jai Hind”,
“Jai Bharat” or “Hindustan Zindabad” not enough? Why is the singing of the
national anthem not enough? Which Constitutional principle, which law of the
land, is violated if some Muslims genuinely believe that saying “Bharat Mata ki
Jai” is against the teachings of Islam? Why is it that Muslims who have no
difficulty in saying the same words, at an Arvind Kejriwal rally for example,
have a problem with Hindutva’s diktat? Is the nationalism bogey not simply an
insidious ploy to push secular democratic India towards Hindu Rashtra?

Why can’t the Congress
and the Nationalist Congress Party see what’s amply clear not only to the Left
parties (“A single slogan cannot ever become the sole patriotism test of
citizens”: Communist Party of India-Marxist general secretary, Sitaram Yechury)
but also sections of the media? Take, for example, the
lead editorial in the March 18 edition of The Indian Express under
the headline: “Hand of the bully: Congress must take responsibility for its
role in the disgraceful suspension from the Maharashtra Assembly of Waris
Pathan”: The article starts with:

“Everyone must be
patriotic, and patriotism will be defined by the bully, those who can shout the
loudest, have their way. You will be tested on not just the slogans you raise
but on those you do not raise. Patriotism will be forced by the BJP and its
parivar, but not just by them. If you are deemed to be not patriotic enough, be
very afraid, also, of the Congress.”

And the lead editorial
in The Asian Age warns: “Were the Maharashtra
Assembly mood to gain force… we would be going astray as a people and bringing
upon ourselves every curse that wakes in the wake of the wilful distortion of
the historical record.”

Through their
unsolicited "Bharat Mata ki jai" chant in Parliament and at the Sufi
Forum, Javed Akhtar and the Sufis have built their distance not only from “Bad
Muslims” but also from millions of Hindus who refuse to endorse the claim of
Hindu Nationalists that this, and this slogan alone, is the real test of every
Indians’ love for and loyalty to his country.

Meaningless words

At an informal
gathering of Kanhaiya Kumar and a few JNU students on the campus about a week
ago, one of them asked: we students at JNU, Hyderabad University and elsewhere
have been fighting Hindutva’s menace; why are Muslim leaders and organisations
so silent when they too should be concerned about the same thing?

About Owaisi and his
party with a blatantly Muslim communal agenda, the less said the better. If
anything, the MIM’s politics is rich material for a case study on how not to
combat Hindutva’s designs. For many Muslims across the country, it is an article
of faith that the MIM is in cahoots with the BJP-RSS as both benefit from
spreading the poison of communalism. Some even talk of crores changing hands.

But what might Javed
Akhtar and the Sufis have to say in response to the query by the JNU student? If not as a Muslim,
what stopped Akhtar from speaking out against the growing witch-hunt, doctored
videos by TV channels, takeover of not just educational campuses but even court
premises by lynch mobs with state connivance? Not earlier, when academics, writers
and artists (many of them atheists, though not communists) returned awards in
protest, nor in his speech in the Rajya Sabha?

His speech said
nothing more than what could be expected from a detached sage having descended
from some ashram in the Himalayas for a brief glance at the state of the
nation. Words of wisdom totally bereft of any reference, except obliquely, to
the ugly climate being built up in the country with active encouragement from
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-directed, Modi-led, BJP-dominated, NDA
government at the Centre.

What history tells
us: As for the Sufis who took
pains to ingratiate themselves with the prime minister, here’s an interesting
bit of history. Among the main players in the All India Ulama and Mashaikh
Board who organised the World Sufi Forum are the management and direct
beneficiaries of the dargahs of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya (Delhi) and Khwaja
Moinuddin Chisti (Ajmer). Anyone familiar with the life and times of these
saints will tell you that keeping a distance, never cozying up or currying
favours, from the powers that be was almost an obsession with the Sufis.

During his lifetime,
Hazrat Nizamuddin was witness to the rise and fall of eight different sultans
who occupied the throne. It is well-known that the saint strongly disapproved
of, and actively discouraged, any of these sultans even from paying a royal
visit to his abode. Amir Khusro, the most renowned disciple of the saint, was
also an officer in the court of Jalaluddin Khilji. Khusro came to know that
eager to somehow seek the Hazrat Nizamuddin’s blessings, was planning on
visiting the saint in disguise. Khusro leaked the news to Hazrat Nizamuddin who
promptly left the city to foil the sultan’s surreptitious plan.

Furious with such
“treachery” and “disclosure of state secret”, Khilji demanded an explanation
from Khusro. This is what the latter said in his defence: “I had to choose
between betraying my peer and betraying you. In betraying my peer I would have
lost my imaan (faith); in betraying you I stand to lose only
my jaan (life). I would sooner lose my jaan than
myimaan”. An impressed Khilji forgave Khusro his great betrayal.

Recounting this
incident from history, a devout Sufi practitioner told Sabrang India: “You
could say that in hosting the prime minister, the organisers of the World Sufi
Forum have betrayed their Chisti tradition (the silsala to
which most of the Sufis in India belonged), if not theirimaan.

Among the many Sufi silsilas (orders)
there were some who stood aloof from power, even spoke truth to power. Others
provided legitimacy to the ruler of the day. While Hazrat Nizamuddin and Khwaja
Moinuddin belonged to the former category, the organisers of the Delhi meet who
otherwise swear by these very saints have chosen a contrary path.

Moving forward: Through their unsolicited "Bharat Mata ki
jai" chant in Parliament and at the Sufi Forum, Javed Akhtar and the Sufis
have built their distance not only from “Bad Muslims” but also from millions of
Hindus who refuse to endorse the claim of Hindu Nationalists that this, and
this slogan alone, is the real test of every Indians’ love for and loyalty to
his country.

The growing influence
of Saudi Arabia-fuelled rigid and intolerant version of Islam should be a
matter of concern for all Indians, Muslims particularly. The AIUMB could have
played a very positive role in preserving India’s syncretic tradition, stemming
the Wahhabi tide. But from the brand of Sufism on display at the Delhi meet, it
is seems that the answer for Indian Muslims lies elsewhere.

Perhaps they should
give some thought to what Omid Safi, an American professor of Islamic studies
wrote some years ago in the American context, but which is equally relevant in
our present context: “If our public
discourse about religion and politics is to evolve to a more subtle, and
accurate, space, it must get to the point where religious voices that speak
from the depths and heights of all spiritual traditions can do more than simply
acquiesce in the face of the Empire. They can, and should, speak for the weak,
and give voice to the voiceless”.

Or, closer home, they
could pay heed to two liberation theologists from Pakistan, Junaid S Ahmed and
Sania Sufi: “Muslims must dig through the Islamic canon for a discourse far
more liberating than merely the negation of beheadings or senseless violence or
intolerance”.